


Transcendentalism

by lucidSeraph



Category: Megaman ZX, Rockman | Mega Man - All Media Types, The Protomen
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Dark, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Cyberpunk, Gen, Transhumanism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-12-04
Updated: 2011-12-04
Packaged: 2017-10-26 21:07:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/287925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucidSeraph/pseuds/lucidSeraph
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An attempt to AU elements of the Megaman ZX series into the universe presented by the Protomen.</p><p>It is said that humanity cannot be saved. So what happens when you stop being human?</p><p>If you change the working parts...<br/>... you get a different machine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Transcendentalism

His earliest memory is of he and his sister sitting and staring up at one of the many screens around the city. He can hear the man speak, but he cannot remember the words. He is mesmerized by the motion, and he tugs at his mother's sleeve. He can't remember the question he asks, but she shakes her head and covers both their eyes and whispers,  
“Don't listen. It doesn't mean anything.”

****

She remembers coming back to their tiny apartment in a district so far outside the city center that it might as well be a suburb, and asking her mother when they can get one of those nice shiny screens like they have in the city, she'd like a nice screen, but her mother shakes her head.  
“Either he'll give us a screen someday,” she said, “Or he won't. And as it is, you shouldn't listen to him. He's...”  
Her mother looked around furtively and lowered her voice.  
“He's a bad man, and he lies all the time, so don't listen to him.”  
She remembers this. She keeps it in her heart and she believes it.

****

Both of them later talk about how they remember their mother, always so tired, her hands shaking slightly, the way she'd cry in her sleep. Both of them remember how their mother had bright green eyes and so did they, and neither remembers their father, a fact they both lament. Their mother was never able to say what happened to him, or why.  
Both of them remember how she'd say, over and over again, keep quiet but don't listen.  
Both of them remember better when she told them, holding them gently and whispering, listen to me, listen carefully, the man in the tower lies and lies and everyone's falling asleep and believes them but I'm still awake and you should be too, I'm too weak to fight but someday when you are older and stronger you need to stop this.  
You need to end this.  
She'd tell them every night before they slept a story about their grandmother, who was old enough to still remember when it had all been different. They'd never known their grandmother but her mother would talk about how their grandmother had hated the man on the screens, hated everything he'd done and cursed his name and that she was right and they must remember this. She spoke of a time when women and men had worked (“Worked?”) and toiled but that while it had been hard and fraught they had also been free.  
They remembered this.

****

He remembers when they got their first screen. It was delivered by a faceless steel man with the instruction that not installing it was dissidence. We have control. We keep you safe. We are your hope. Their mother had told them about how the man could see them through the screens and hear them through the loudspeakers and how whatever they did they must be quiet about it because if they were not the man would send his soldiers and then all hope would be lost.  
He remembers when she opened the door she did just that. She smiled. She told them how glad she was that their town was finally considered significant enough to get such a wondrous gift.  
The robot installed it and turned it on and then it was never off, always babbling, always that face there, and he grew to resent it but never showed it.

****

She remembers the day of the broadcast. Eight years old, the beginning of that year, that terrible year, and she remembers.  
All around the screens lit up showing a machine, a blue machine, who went to fight Wily, who went to save them and the crowds which walked behind. She and her brother grew so caught up in the spectacle that they chanted too; their mother tried to stop them but they ignored her and she gave up very quickly, sitting in the back of the room covering her ears and shaking her head (they don't remember her mouthing at the screen _they're just children I'll re-educate them they're just children leave them alone they're just children_ )  
And then there's the red robot (the red robot their mother told them to fear to run if you see him to run as fast and as hard as you can he is fallen he tried to save us once but then the man in the tower twisted his mind and made him hate us because that's what the man in the tower does ) and at first they chant for his death but then he speaks and for once she does not tune it out.  
For once she listened.  
She listened because what he says is so different and so strange and it's clear suddenly that their mother was wrong after all, because he sounded like he was trying to save them still.  
“Is there no one who will stand up and try to fight?”  
“I WILL,” she shouted, pumping her fist, yelling to the screen. “I'LL FIGHT!”  
Her brother hesitated, but then he began too, both of them screaming that they would, but no one on the screen even tried and their mother screamed and cried and shook her head and tried to grab both of them to tell them no, no, you can't, please stop, don't, I'll send them to be reeducated just please don't kill us please oh god except both of them wiggled and both of them fought and then  
And then.  
The crowd chanted for the red robot's death, and they screamed no, don't, fight with him, and the blue robot begged the red to please fight by his side while the red said that this proved his point, they would never fight, and then  
It's burned into her mind like a brand  
Blue killed red. Blue turned, and blue said they were the dead.

****

It was so rare that they were allowed any sort of leisure, but sometimes there were days they were permitted to see the old amusement park, days indicated by the man in the tower, and so their mother had taken them, wishing to get them out of the house. For the past year she'd scolded them and kept them inside and again and again, unwilling to send them to be reeducated.  
“No. No, you can't, you're too young to fight and don't talk about that,” she said, and this time she meant it, she backpedaled, fighting was a bad idea no but the damage had been done and they understood her to be saying (or thought they did) you must fight someday, but don't speak of it, pretend.  
They got very good at pretending.  
The place was old and rusted but there are still some rides that work, and they’re all herded inside. In retrospect, he feels he should have known, he should have seen...  
The lights were blinding. The clattering of old rollercoaster wheels married with the rattatattat of machine gun fire and they coughed and sought each other through the smoke, screaming, crying, and then they watched their mother cut down in a shower of blood by a red and silver monstrosity of whirling blades.  
Both of them can only remember screaming then.  
(She’d gone into a blind rage, running at the bladed man, but he pulled her back, no, not today, run just run, but they’d run straight into a man with no face and thunder in his fingertips and he’d smiled—he could of course do nothing _but_ smile—and snapped his fingers and then there was silence.  
The funny thing about electricity is this: it’s the amperage that kills you, not the voltage. That is to say, potential can’t kill you, only flow and motion. So it is that when you build your robot to fling about five hundred thousand volts in a burst, you’re _likely_ to kill anything you want with it.  
Very likely.  
But not _certain._ )

****

They woke and the world was silent. She tried to speak to him and he to her, but they could hear no sound. Hear no evil. Not anymore. They wandered back into town, traumatized and hurting but aware enough to go to that place where all children without parents (and there were many) went.  
They could see their mouths moving but no voices came to them, they sat in darkened rooms and listened to propaganda films but there was nothing to hear, and so all attempts at reprogramming escaped them. At first they were beaten but they learned, slowly, how to pretend. Look at mouth movements. Teach each other. Speak very carefully. The robots ignored them. There was no reason to kill those who were broken, after all, and for a time they lay low.  
The two of them together worked to find a way to speak to each other. There was no need or reason to speak to anyone else; after all, everyone else’s words were lies. Writing was no good, the others could read that, but a system of hand signals, of meaningful glances, of eyebrow quirks, and before long they held a secret world between them, silent and perfect.  
They’ve never forgotten it. To this day, a thousand words pass between them silently, even without their Biometals.

****

Each day it got worse, Wily’s new blue terror screaming in his madness and destroying whole blocks in agony. They were so far out that it would take time for him to arrive, but they still watched the news (couldn’t hear, didn’t have to, knew what it was saying) and she looked him in the eye.  
 _We have to do something._  
A twitch, a move of the fingers, a tilt of the head.  
 _I know. But I don’t know what._  
She looked out across the burning city and frowned.  
 _We can’t be the only ones. No matter what Protoman said. I believe._  
He nodded.  
 _But it’s like finding the one steel screw in a box full of aluminum._  
She folded her arms.  
 _I believe._


End file.
